(Untitled)

[pendragoness]

This might come across as an odd question, but something that crossed my mind today.  I've read a lot of discussion about the problems for women pursing academic science in terms of how the timescale of graduate school, post-doc, and pursing tenure affects their ability to have a family, i.e. there is often no time when it is feasible to have

Comments

[silversliver]

NIH grants permit up to 6 weeks paid maternity leave for scientists paid through the grant. My graduate school now (this academic year; R1 institution) finally implemented a university-wide maternity leave policy (I forget exactly - 4 or 6 weeks). This is still short, having seen coworkers and friends complete pregnancy. The process of being a bioreactor nonstop for 9 months, then still producing milk kind of takes a lot out of people. ;) My campus also has facilities for women to pump while they're at work so they can still feed their babies real milk. The quality of these facilities and relative accessibility varies greatly

[pendragoness]

yeah, i'm not totally sure what i want, I was just curious what people's experiences were...thanks for sharing though!

[charlycrash]

I'm not a chemist, but I'd imagine most chemistry lab work is out. Psych lab work would be fine, though (for the most part).

[technocracygirl]

Doesn't exactly help is working at a bench is your job. You do what you can, especially when you're trying to get pregnant, since the first few months are the riskiest in terms of development. (Yes, the entire pregnancy is risky, but the first three are the riskiest, both in terms of accidental miscarriage and in problems, which is what usually leads to the accidental miscarriage.)

Now, if you were an industrial chemist/industrial chemist tech where you were dealing with vats of solvents, it would be a different matter. But typical bench work? Just be careful. (And in the first three months, it's not like you can get time off anyway.

Anecdote: a woman in my lab delivered a perfectly healthy kid after working all the way up to the day before labor started.

[suslik_]

I think it shouldn't be such a big problem if all safety procedures are followed. Of course, you have to be extra careful when pregnant, and maybe switch to projects where you don't have to work with very dangerous materials

[antarcticlust]

Depending on the safety of the materials you habitually work with, I'm thinking that you might want to time your pregnancy to a writing/data analysis period.

[yelya]

I will be getting a total of 13 weeks of maternity leave from my institution (it's not bad!) As far as dangerous exposures are concerned, there are several options you can take